Page 3052 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 23 September 2014
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Eventually it disappeared; it has disappeared from sight. We know the pressure that has put the planners under. We know that pots of money were spent—more in this input model: “Yes, we spent money”—but we are not getting the outcomes. We know that in the case of the new hospital tower a number of local firms had made up consortia with overseas organisations. One group was the preferred tenderer, who did not get the job because again the government changed its decisions.
We have seen years of rollovers and delays in capital infrastructure. You only need to look at two projects that have been on the books longer than probably half the members in this place have been in attendance in this place—the bush healing farm, and what seems to be a permanent delay with the secure mental health unit. When projects were delivered they were late, the scope had changed or the costs had blown out. We had it lauded that we had a centenary hospital for women and children, but initially it did not have any extra beds. All it was was a shuffling of wards in the hospital to bring them together for an opening for the minister. We had to go back and put in extra capacity because they got it wrong, as they do so often. It will be interesting to see the report when the secure mental health facility is finally delivered and opened—what was the start date, what was the original costing, what was the opening date and what was the final costing.
It will be the same for the bush healing farm. The consultation there was appalling. It is not where the Indigenous people wanted the bush healing farm. They had Hobson’s choice: take it or leave it. Now we know that there is enormous cost in cleaning up the site. Who knows when it will open? You can read the budget documents to see the date being pushed out year after year, but if you can believe it I am not sure when it will be delivered.
If we go back some time, it is about keeping promises. All our promises were on the table, except for the Calvary hospital sale, which ended up in a complete debacle. It was an absolute debacle delivered by the hands of the health minister.
The data doctoring scandal in 2012 showed us the sort of culture that now pervades the system: to make things work for their political masters instead of making things work for the patients, which should be the objective of any health system, we saw one official data doctoring. We know that investigations are still not complete; we have still not found out whether it was done by one person or not. She fessed up and said she did not do it all. Who were the others who did this, and why? When you have got that sort of attitude, it is impossible for things to get better.
There is an ongoing crisis in our health system. You could summarise it by saying there are overcrowded, unsafe hospitals due to beds being virtually full, indeed at unsafe levels. You have got ongoing and new capital work delays and rollovers. You have got ongoing delays in the delivery of the mental health facility, which puts pressure on the existing facility. You have got the failure to deliver the new tower block, which again has put pressure back into the system as well as undue pressure and costs on local business. We have bulk-billing at the lowest rates in the nation, yet we have a local doctor who wants to build a bulk-billing facility in Tuggeranong and the government will not help. After years of delay and paperwork, they say, “We will cut the red tape.” But here is a doctor who wants to build a bulk-billing facility and
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